sailor, wide and various knowledge of all quarters of the globe and of
types of mankind, though, to be sure, their investigations did not
proceed far beyond their ports, and you were sometimes more astonished
at what they did not know than at what they did. They had the
self-poise and self-confidence of men who day by day and month by
month hold their lives in their hands, and are practised in finding a
way out of danger and difficulty. They had a code of good manners and
polite behavior which was not highly refined, but contained the sound,
essential elements of courtesy; not expressed in fancy, but honest and
solid. They had great shrewdness, and were capable of really fine
diplomacy, for the school they attended demanded such proficiency.
They had a dry, chuckling humor; a homely philosophy, often mingled
with the queerest superstitions; a racy wit, smacking somewhat, of
course, of the quarter-deck, or even of the forecastle; a seemingly
incongruous sensibility, so that tears easily sprang to their eyes if
the right chord of pathos were touched; a disposition to wear a
high-colored necktie and a broad, gold watch-chain, and to observe a
certain smartness in their boots and their general shore rigging; a
good appetite for good food, and not a little discernment of what was
good; a great and boylike enjoyment of primitive pleasures; a love of
practical jokes and a hearty roar of laughter for hearty fun; a
self-respecting naturalness, which made them gentlemen in substance if
not in all technical details; a pungent contempt for humbug and
artifice, though they might not mind a good, swaggering lie upon
occasion; a robust sense of honor in all matters which were trusted to
their honorable feeling; and, to make an end of this long catalogue, a
practical command of language regarded as a means of expressing and
communicating the essential core of thoughts, though the words might
not always be discoverable in Johnson's dictionary or the grammatical
constructions such as would be warranted by Lindley Murray. They were,